130 Chapter 5 RESULTS Affective responses Fifteen participants did not confirm their answer on one trial and two participants did not confirm their answer on two trials for the affective response question, resulting in 19 missing trials (out of 2880; 0.7%) that were excluded from further analyses in both the analyses of the affective and neural responses. In order to correctly handle these missing trials a generalized linear mixed regression model was performed to assess the influence of ‘perspective’ (3 levels: Self, own child, unfamiliar child) and ‘stimulus type’ (2 levels: Physical and social) on self-reported levels of distress. First, physically unpleasant sentences elicited higher levels of distress compared to socially unpleasant sentences independent of perspective (main effect ‘stimulus type’: χ2(1) = 10.52, p = .001, B = -0.131, SE = .040, t(2796) = -3.249, p = .001, d = 0.12). No interaction was found between ‘perspective’ and ‘stimulus type’ (χ2(2) = 3.46, p = .177). With regard to the main focus of our study and in line with our hypothesis, the perspective parents empathized with significantly influenced their levels of distress (main effect ‘perspective’: χ2(2) = 518.37, p <.001, see Figure 5.2, Supplement S5.3). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons (using Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons) indicated significantly higher levels of distress when confronted with unpleasant situations involving one’s own child versus an unfamiliar child (B = 1.103, SE = .049, t(2796) = 22.375, p <.001, d = 1.02) and higher levels of distress for one’s own child versus self (B = -0.733, SE = .049, t(2796) = -14.838, p <.001, d = 0.68). Furthermore, parents reported significantly higher levels of distress for the self versus an unfamiliar child (B = 0.370, SE = .049, t(2796) = 7.509, p <.001, d = 0.34). In terms of covariates, mothers reported significantly higher levels of distress than fathers, independent of ‘perspective’ or ‘stimulus type’ (main effect parental gender: χ2(1) = 6.32, p = .012, d = 0.47). Parental age and adolescents’ age and gender did not significantly affect selfreported distress (all p-values >.304) (see Figure 5.2 and Supplement S5.3). Lastly, Spearman rank-order correlation analysis indicated that parental care, as reported by the adolescent child, was not associated with the mean ∆self-reported parental distress towards their own child (i.e., own child minus unfamiliar child perspective), rs = -0.017, p = .905. All outcomes remained significant after controlling for gender of parents, current psychopathology, and psychotropic medication status in separate analyses (see Supplement S5.9).
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